Arrival:
We arrived at Sandals Royal Bahamian after one week at Club Med Columbus Isle on nearby San Salvador. This was on Jul. 25th. We quickly signed in and were led to the taxi that would take us to the resort. We didn’t have a good first impression when our ultra-all-inclusive vacation was started with "GRATUITIES GREATLY ACCEPTED" written all over the van. We promptly ignored this.

We were given a choice of one drink of champagne and a wet towel immediately upon arrival. Because we had filled in most of our registration card ahead of time at the airport, we were able to be checked in first among our group. Because we were on our honeymoon, they gave us a free upgrade to a honeymoon suite in the new Windsor building.

Accomodation:
Our room was very clean and the fridge was well stocked. However, the mismatch of colours and styles was really ugly. Interior decoration from hell. Nothing seemed to match. The room was very quiet the whole time we were there, but we heard from people on lower floors that they weren’t so lucky.

The bathroom did not have a separate toilet (a feature we had grown to like at Club Med). Despite the fact that the building was only about 8 months old, it was already definitely showing age – the tap fixture kept falling off, there were cracks on the floor, etc. We heard people whose rooms were in the other tower complaining that they had no hot water. We had a lovely, huge tub, but when we filled it we discovered the water was an odd green colour. Not inviting. There was a hairdryer – but it was hilarious. It looked like a vacuum cleaner, and mainly made a lot of noise. We heard lots of other people complaining about it too, so it’s not just us.

The room’s balcony had two chairs and a table and a rack to dry your clothes on – nice touch.  We proceeded to unpack our welcome package and found that we were missing our towel tokens. (A few other people complained about this too). We picked these up at the front desk. The bath robes were also missing from our room, and it took four days before we finally harassed housekeeping enough to give us some.

The Grounds:
Both pools had loungers packed densely everywhere, with every guest on top of the other. In order to get a lounger with an umbrella, it was necessary to get there early in the morning. During the day, the pools were so full of people on the foam beds that it was impossible to float without bumping into multiple people. The pool was also not clean. We can understand part of the problem. There were tons of people there, and we saw one woman in particular eating an ice cream cone, with it dripping right into the water. Our suits wound up dirty. Not a nice feeling.

The grounds were not very well kept up. The whole place really needed a fresh coat of paint. The grounds always made us feel a bit claustrophobic, as they were trying to pack so much into a small amount of space. There was an awfully large amount of concrete, and very few trees or plants.  The Villas at the back of the property looked beautiful, but were too close to the main road (which was busy even on the weekend) to be relaxing.

We searched for the advertised hammocks, and found only two or three of them – one by the villas close to the road, and two by the beach which seemed to be permanently in use. There was a hanging basket chair at the end of each of the docks, but these were very popular as well. With 600 guests, 5 cool chairs isn’t really enough.

The beach on the property was worse then we thought it would be. We had been warned it was small, but this fell short of our rock bottom expectations. There was the constant buzzing of jet ski operators trying to make a deal with the guests, and when they were unable to, they would zip about across the tiny beachfront disturbing everyone. We also saw broken glass washed up in several places. The beach was generally small, dirty, and packed. What little beachfront there was was broken up by the two docks, making for little patches of beach, some of it unusable.
The swim-up bars were often very crowded and it would take 5-10 minutes to get a drink. The mixes weren’t that good, either. We’ve had better daiquiris at a local corner restaurant.

The temperature of the buildings was very uneven. Some would be absolutely freezing, while others were sweltering.
The SANDALS logo is plastered everywhere. On buildings, in the pool, etc. Not that we would ever forget where we had gone.  We saw a few cockroaches in and about the buildings, and one rat-like creature scampered around that we couldn’t identify.

Restaurants:
We had been warned that it was difficult to get reservations at some of the restaurants. Immediately upon our arrival, we tried to make reservations at all the restaurants that required them. Baccharat is the smallest restaurant, and the ONLY reservation we could get was on Saturday night – which happened to be the night of the grand buffet at the Spices restaurant, which was something we didn’t want to miss.

Of course, what confused us was the couple who we met on the taxi had managed to get a reservation several days earlier. Of course, they had ‘concierge service’ which probably got them into restaurants more flexibly than our cheaper accommodation. When we left, they were just changing to a new restaurant reservation plan where reservations were required only for Cafe Goombay, the island restaurant. We’re not sure if this was a seasonal switch or a permanent switch, however.

Dress at most of the restaurants was at least khakis with nice shoes for the men, and sundresses for the women.
All the restaurants had dirty, tasteless, under ripe fruits. The service was generally pretty good with a few exceptions we’ll mention below.

We tried lunch at The Grill, which is the open air restaurant that has American-style hamburgers/fries/pizza/nachos. (The nachos were served with the kind of cheese product that you get at ball games). Service was extremely slow and we didn’t go back to this restaurant the rest of the week. The food was predictably very heavy. Pigeons and flies were everywhere – they should have installed netting to keep them out.

Kimono’s is the Japanese restaurant. There was a heavy emphasis on entertainment here. It was far from genuine cultural cuisine (as were all the restaurants). Our dinner was prepared in front of us by an over-the-top singing chef. Most of the people we ate with seemed to enjoy it, though. It was a good social dinner with other people, (a la Club Med), not a romantic spot. We were warned that some chefs are more entertaining than others. Instead of choosing a main meal from a menu, the chef prepared everything and you could just choose what you wanted. The dessert at this restaurant was excellent, by the way.

Baccharat is a small restaurant that is supposed to be the "fanciest". When reserving, try to ask for a table near the window as this gets you a view of the pool and the Spices terrace. Of course, the place really wasn’t that fancy, as half of the tables shared a long bench reminiscent of eating at Denny’s. Breakfast here is supposed to be "light" and is ordered from the menu, unlike the other restaurants which were all buffet. We found breakfast cold and lacked taste, despite the fancy service. It was no lighter than the buffets. Dinner was pretty much the same, pretentious and underwhelming.

Spices is the main buffet restaurant, open for breakfast lunch and dinner. The food was mostly cold and seemed to have been prepared sometime last century. What little choice there was to have something made to order was usually bungled. We also saw the chef lick her fingers and proceed to cook our dinner. The food in general was very heavy, with poor quality meats. There were lots of choices for dessert, but they were all "Sara Lee" quality. Not what we were looking for from our "exclusive resort" vacation.

The Crystal Room was another quite pretentious restaurant. Service was excellent, and the food was fairly good. Lots of selection on the menu. The dessert was terrible, the same thing as the buffet desserts.

Casanova’s was their Italian restaurant and was by far and away the best. Breakfast and lunch buffets there were identical to Spices but at dinnertime this restaurant was simply in a class of its own. The service was amazing – very friendly waiters who never got our orders wrong. The food was the best we had. Excellent breads with pesto sauce and other toppings, nice salad, and every meal we tried was excellent. The meat was prepared how we asked for it to be prepared. Desserts were ordered from the menu and tasted great, but a lot of them tasted strongly of alcohol. (It’s fine if you like that taste, but if you don’t you had a choice of one dessert).

Cafe Goombay is the open air restaurant on the island. Seafood, seafood, and more seafood. Except it wasn’t very good. No choice of lobster, either, or crab, or anything else – mostly conch and other processed seafood. There was a choice of two soups – both involved conch. Despite everyone arriving by boat at the same time, service was pretty good. The desserts were the same quality as the buffets’.

None of the restaurants have ocean views, (but the fitness center does – who designed this place?). The decor is very over the top and often wasn’t consistent. The place portrays itself as being really fancy, and yet we found that the napkins (and towels) were frayed and falling apart.

The Room Service menu for breakfast consisted of continental breakfast. Juice, muffins, bread, fruits. It left a lot to be desired. They never brought enough of anything (if we each ordered the same thing, they brought only one serving) and often got things just plain wrong. They always forgot to leave the room service menu lists for the next day too – we don’t understand how they could mess up such a simple thing as slipping a menu under everyone’s door. A lot of other people were complaining about this too.

Watersports:

Sucked. The equipment was dirty, a lot of it was broken. The lifejackets, for example, were covered with mildew and dirt – it was disgusting. They were all the same size – and people aren’t. There were 6 newer ones that were still clean. For 600 people. We tried sailing a few times. The winds were very uneven, and when we got stuck out in the water and a thunderstorm rolled in, none of the Sandals staff noticed or cared – we had to paddle back into shore with our hands. We got a lot of attitude from the water sports staff, as well. We tried the glass-bottom boat ride to see if we wanted to bother snorkeling. We could barely even see through the glass bottom, as they hadn’t cleaned it in a while. They never cut the motor, so of course we never really saw any fish. We did however check out the condition of the masks and snorkels, and decided we didn’t really need to go snorkeling. They do also have windsurfing, which we don’t have good enough balance for, and waterskiing. We’re beginners, and although we loved it at Club Med, with the Sandals’ staff’s attitude and their equipment, we didn’t feel comfortable trying it there.

Daytime Entertainment:

Sandals drops off a list of activities every day to keep the guests busy. We tried several of these and for the most part they were unorganized, late, and disappointing. The “playmakers” generally didn’t care at all: (for example, at one of the events, the "Big Games", we heard the following (serious!) exchange. Playmaker 1: "We forgot the basketball at the office. With all these people, why do _I_ have to go get it?" Playmaker 2: "That’s the difference between _work_ and vacation.") . Playmakers would show up to a Pictionary game *without* Pictionary or a board or markers. A water volleyball game was interrupted because the beach volleyball game was starting and they needed the only ball back. (We paid $4000 and they can only afford ONE VOLLEYBALL???). The playmakers often didn’t know the rules of the game they were trying to organize.

On the plus side, the lovers game was entertaining, if badly organized. We won a “free” t-shirt!

Nighttime Entertainment:

Sandals organized a few shows in the theatre. We only attended two, and that was two too many. Their showcase performance was called "Emotion in Motion". It consisted of a narrator announcing that this show would bring us to "new emotions and planes of existence". The opening piece featured a bunch of women in black bodysuits with white underwear on top. A black light was used, so we could only see their underwear. Before the music began, the dancers were lined up in a row facing away. We saw one girl scratching her butt at center stage as she waited for the show to start. It didn’t get better. We’ve seen much better high school productions. The talent show was equally pathetic. We’re sure some of the guests who performed were quite good, but it was so overworked and the announcer was so over the top that we left after the first half hour.

On nights when there was no show, they would turn the theatre into a disco. We never saw it with more than a dozen people there. They alternated between a DJ and a live house band. (The band wasn’t that bad). The volume was really loud.

There was also a very entertaining pianist in the piano bar. They passed out songbooks and everyone got pretty into it. The piano bar was very hot, though.

The Spa:

After all the problems we had, we tried contacting the "guardian angel" we had been assigned when we arrived. He was ‘out sick’ until past when we left. We finally yelled loud enough at other people that they gave us each a free half hour Swedish massage at the Spa.

We arrived a little late, and my wife got told off for this. (this despite the fact that the spa was empty and they masseuses were sitting around doing nothing).

We were under the mistaken impression that a massage was supposed to leave you feeling better than when you got there. This did not hold true for either of us. We felt poked and prodded, but no better. The massage also wasn’t as long as it was supposed to be.

On the plus side, they had really cool showers with 5 different heads that would move back and forth massaging away all the pain the masseuses had inflicted.

Checking Out:

To add insult to injury, we were surprised to find we had $25 of room charges for TWO long distance calls, both under 2 minutes. They claimed that the calls were much longer (8 minutes) and their computer "couldn’t be wrong". We stood our ground and fought long enough that they eventually reduced the charge to only $10.

Summary:

Don’t go. Maybe we’re just not "Sandals People" but we really don’t understand who would be. Even if unlimited drinks are important to you, we calculated that for the amount extra we paid, we could have been completely tanked at Club Med 24/7. [Note: Cub Med now has unlimited drinks making it even more of a slam dunk!]

We honeymooned at Club Med Columbus Isle (on the island of San Salvador in the Bahamas) beginning Jul. 19, 1999. A bit of background: Neither of us had ever been to an all inclusive resort. We are not divers (Wendy has asthma). We are not terribly sporty people but are interested to learn. We are not big party people, but like dancing. We are not big drinkers. We couldn’t decide whether to go to Sandals Royal Bahamian or Club Med Columbus Isle, so we did a week of both. (Isn’t a marriage all about compromise?) Another post will talk about our experiences at Sandals (hint: DON’T GO!).

First of all, despite the fact that Columbus Isle is touted as a good honeymoon destination, the remoteness of San Salvador makes for very difficult travel arrangements. We got married on a Saturday. By the time we were able to reach Nassau on Sunday, no more flights were available to Columbus Isle. Even the new New York to Columbus Isle charter didn’t help as it leaves on Saturday.  Thus we had to overnight in Nassau (expensive: we stayed at Holiday Inn for $100 US with $20 cab from and to the airport..).

Arrival:

Our flight on Bahamas Air was without incident, despite what we had heard on the net. We were greeted off the plane by a Club Med GO. The San Salvador airport is tiny, with only one plane a day and a big "NO SWEARING" sign posted outside.  The resort was a 2 minute drive from the airport. We were checked in very quickly, given a drink, and were on our way to our room.

Accommodation:

Our room was very clean, with beautiful pieces of art on the wall. Huge beautiful wooden shutters opened to an ocean view with a big palm tree shading our balcony. Even though we did not pay for the ocean front upgrade, we had a great room. There are no carpets in the rooms. The bathroom is very big, with nice wooden slatted doors to the separate toilet. We also had a minifridge. Nicely appointed, with cool looking glasses, nice hairdryer, iron/ironing board.

Note that the water at Columbus Isle is not completely desalinated and thus it is necessary to drink bottled water. ($2.40US for a liter and a half). Showers took a little longer to get the soap out of your hair and never left us feeling 100% clean. No big deal though. There is a TV in the room with about 15 channels for when you need to relax from the sports. They carried the Discovery channel, and that’s all we needed to be happy.

The Grounds:

The grounds are absolutely magnificent. We can not praise Club Med enough for the level of cleanliness, the tasteful decor, very well thought out landscaping, etc. The club itself covers a lot of ground, and it was about a 10 minute walk from our room to the Annex restaurant. There were beautiful trees and flowers everywhere throughout the property, often with signs indicating what we were looking at and its country of origin. A path snakes roughly parallel to the beach across the whole property. The path itself is beautiful, with interesting mosaics in the bricks in multiple places. In the evening, very subtle ground lights ensure that you can see the path, but let you enjoy the stars in a much more natural setting. One note – there are a lot of mosquitoes at night – bring bug repellent if you want to eat dinner outside, or walk on the beach at night.

The pool area (no whirlpool) has many lounge chairs around it, many of them shaded, and we never had a hard time getting a place to lie down. There is also a tall palm right at the corner of the pool, so in the afternoons there is always a corner of the pool that is shaded. Very thoughtful.

The buildings are kept in perfect shape, especially considering the club is almost 8 years old. (And in the tropics everything ages quickly). There are no signs of age at all. The villa-style accommodations are painted with bright colours using a cool paint technique, giving a very interesting and relaxing look. The public bathrooms were always very clean and nicely decorated, and featured walled off stalls. The decor was continued right through to the stall rooms.

Almost every building has a view overlooking the ocean. There are tables outside the main restaurant which offer a beautiful view if you’re willing to brave the mosquitoes (not that bad, much worse on the beach, and only in the evening). At the annex restaurant, reserve early enough that day and enjoy a table for two overlooking the ocean every night. Beautiful.

One of the things we enjoyed the most about the grounds was that the property was so spread out that no matter what time of day, we could go for a walk and feel alone. The week we were there they were nearly at full capacity but we didn’t ever feel like it.

The Beach:

The beach was very clean and there was lots of it. (They have 3.5 miles of private beach). Thus we never ever felt crowded in the water. The only motorized vehicles in sight were the snorkeling/dive boats and the water ski boat (which headed away from the main beach) so it was always very, very quiet. The beach gets steep fairly quickly (about 20 feet out). There were lots of fish right off the beach, and even some coral formations that were about waist-high in water, complete with Sergeant Majors and a lot of other fish we’re not bright enough to identify!
There was some topless-ness at the club, but it was pretty rare.

The Food:

Columbus Isle is now buffet at all the restaurants including the Annex. This was a bit of a bit of a disappointment to  Ian, as he doesn’t like buffets too much, but Wendy was in heaven, as she loves to sample. 

Breakfast buffet is offered from early in the morning till 11:00. We usually made it around 10:30. Very nice selection of cheeses (European influence) and amazing bread – I can still taste the white chocolate bread. Omelets are made on the spot. Nice selection of juices. Fruit was ok. The breakfast food was average buffet, but with a really big selection. The hot food was warm, and the food was heavy.

Lunch was again standard buffet food. We stayed away from most of the beef at Club Med – it was all prepared very rare. (Or still moving, often…) However, there was definitely enough other stuff to keep us well fed for the week we stayed. There was a lot of very good salad mixes (most involving seafood and lots of cool cheeses), or you could make your own. Again, excellent breads at lunch. There were also plenty of choices for hot food that were well done. Lots of different kinds of fish, (and, for the Americans, hamburgers and hotdogs).

Dinner was good buffet food. The restaurants were all fairly similar in terms of quality, but the main restaurant had a little more variety. However, there was often lobster to be had at the Annex restaurant. The Friday Night theme buffet was incredible – we felt sick we ate so much – and that’s how it should be! Service was very good – friendly staff. Everything was very clean.

The Sports:

This is another area where Club Med absolutely blew us away. We snorkeled, sailed, water-skied, and windsurfed. The staff was excited, knowledgeable, and helpful. The equipment clean and in good condition.

Snorkeling: Wow – 6 different snorkeling sites! Two trips a day. One hour each. We went out three times. Very good snorkeling. Equipment was very clean. Nice inflatable life vests were required to be worn, but it was easy enough to let the air out of them if you wanted to do a surface dive. Very good visibility, very calm waters. We even saw a nurse shark. (From which we ran! – yes, we know they’re harmless). We were impressed by the guy running the trips (Mathieu) and really felt we’d be taken care of if anything happened.

These are the awesome people who taught us to waterski. We both actually managed to get up, and stay up. What we didn't manage to do was take a picture. Which we're very bitter about. Here's part of the staff show instead. Those are Club Med's diving/snorkling boats in the background.

Waterskiing: Neither of us had ever water-skied and we were terrified but we did it! There is a waterskiing raft anchored about a 50 foot swim from shore. (of course with a tarp providing shade, and drinking water available as you wait your turn – this IS Club Med, after all!) A simple short lesson, and soon we were in the water. A boat is equipped with a pole for first-timers, as a GO helps you from the boat with re-teaching the lesson you just learned on the raft and promptly messed up. The GO’s were very patient and gave us the confidence to get going. We then tried on the rope and were both successful – again with much help from the staff.

Sailing: Another great experience. Neither of us had ever sailed before. We were taken out on a Hobie Cat for a private lesson by a GO. He spent about half an hour with us in the water making sure we were very comfortable. Very good patient instruction. We were assured that if we got into trouble, it was no problem, and they would come out to help us. When we took the boat out alone later, it was smooth sailing (no pun intended!). Very good constant steady wind had us going back and forth with no problems, we looked like old pro’s.

Windsurfing: This didn’t go so well, but it’s not Club Med’s fault! We both just have no sense of balance. A short private lesson on the shore and then we were on a windsurfer in the ocean. We practiced scrambling up on top of it and trying to stay on. Nice touch: Club Med had set up a buoy in the water to tie the windsurfer to so you wouldn’t have to worry about being blown out to sea and be unable to come back. My record was to stay on for a minute and a half! After about 30 minutes of practicing, the GO swam out to see how we were doing and offered us some tips but at the end of an hour of trying we decided to leave that sport to the 9 year olds who were zipping by us as we were sailing.

Tennis: Didn’t go so well – we didn’t bring running shoes and couldn’t get instruction. Besides, it was way too hot.

The big ping pong tournament. Ian is playing the eventual winner.

Table Tennis: No shoes needed for this one! But the table was outside, and the light wind blew the ball around all over the place. Well organized though, and good equipment.

Entertainment:
The GOs put on a show every night. We caught two of them, and were very impressed. They obviously practice a lot and took it seriously. It’s not Broadway, but it’s also not your kid’s school play. The disco we found disappointing. It started around 12:30am and seemed to be just picking up when we stumbled home at 1:00am. Obviously Europeans need less sleep than we do! Be warned that there are other "European" aspects to the disco: There were a few TV’s in the dance club showing soft-core porno movies.

The GO’s: We were impressed across the board with the staff, except for one GO who taught dancing who took her job a little too seriously (we thought). There is a staff introduction event on the Sunday night (We caught this at the end of our stay because we were off-cycle due to our Monday arrival). The GO’s are from all over the world. Very friendly bunch who loved their jobs. (This is in stark contrast to the Sandals crew). They are almost all young, university educated, very energetic. They often hung out at the evening entertainment and we met them at meals.

The GM’s: The guests are mostly European. French was the most commonly spoken language.  We were originally worried about the "sit with 6 other people" concept but very quickly loved it. We met lots of interesting folks and got to practice our French! (For those who don’t speak French, all the staff spoke English.) And when we did want some privacy, all we had to do was arrange to be at the main restaurant early enough to get a table for two and it would be arranged, or go to the Annex, and reserve one.

Summary:
Go! You’ll have a blast.